When I started my company right out of college, I was hungry, impatient and on fire. Ready to take my ideas into the world and change it forever, no matter how many people thought I was crazy.

The only problem was, I had no credentials. No foundation. No body of experience. And certainly no leveragable assets that could become something bigger.

That’s when I learned how to compress time. And here’s how to make it work for you:1. Learn the art of volume. The first lesson I learned as an author was, if you’ve published a book, people think you’re smart. Even if the book is a joke – it’s still a book. Ink is credibility. Which led to the second lesson I learned as an author: If you want people to think you’re really smart, write a dozen books.

So I did. In eight years.

Because it doesn’t matter if you’re right – it matters if you’re everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing – it matters if you’re doing a ton of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re good – it matters if you’re visible. It doesn’t matter if you’re put together – it matters if you’re putting something down.

It doesn’t matter if you’re persuasive – it matters if you’re pervasive. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the right place at the right time – it matters if you’re in a lot of places. How will you use volume to make your voice matter?

2. Waiting is the new working. I no longer mind waiting in line. I’ve accepted the following reality: Life is the line. There's nowhere to get to. There's no future. All you have is right now. And I don't know about you, but if I’m waiting, I’m writing. Even if only for twenty seconds at a time. You’d be amazed how easily a year of lines turns into a box of books.

Instead of looking at your watch, huffing and puffing and trying to enlist the other people in line to join your pity party, make love to the present moment. Then take notes. Because if you don’t write it down, it never happened. But if you build portable creative environments for yourself; you can leverage every micromoment that presents itself. And I guarantee you’ll triple your output. Are trying to find time, make time or steal time?

3. Make energy a priority. If you can’t put more hours in your life, you can always put more life in your hours. That’s the big secret about time: Having more energy not only compresses it – it multiplies it. Think about it: When you’re truly fueled, you take on more work, you solve bigger problems, you pursue bigger challenges, you contribute more value and have greater confidence in the process.

The secret is, you have to become a master of your own energy patterns. That means knowing what makes the most energy available to you. That means identifying what your biggest energy drains are. And that means developing a personal system for replenishing your energy reserve whenever it’s depleted.

Soon, an hour of your time will be more just as meaningful – if not more – than an entire week of someone with poor energy management. On a scale from one to ten, how effectively do you manage your energy?

4. It’s not the years – it’s the mileage. We learn not from our experiences, but from intelligent reflection upon those experiences. As such, wisdom has nothing to do with how much time has past and everything to do with what you did with the past. In the words of the wise philosopher, Henry Rollins, “Wisdom without experience is bullshit.”

If you want to compress time, get direct experience any way you can. Intentionally put yourself in situations that force you to grow up quickly. Write down everything that happens to you along with what you learned along the way. And then teach those lessons to others. You can gain five years of experience in six months. Are you a master at to drawing wisdom from every experience?

5. Execution is a process of elimination. The reason I was able to write a dozen books in eight years is not because I’m superhuman. It’s not because I’m a genius. And it’s not because I’m a better writer than anyone. I just know how to delete. Here’s a quick overview of my publishing and consulting company:

No meetings. No busywork. No status reports. No television. No task requests. No putting out fires. No managing people. No micromanaging people. No committees to go in front of. No office politics. No office. No commute. No distractions. No paperwork.

And after deleting all of that noise, what are you left with? Work. That. Matters. I challenge you to make a list of twenty things you could easily delete from your day. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to compress time. What things are you doing – everyday – that make absolutely no sense at all?

6. Audit the company you keep. Life’s too short to surround yourself with people who don’t challenge and inspire you. If you want to compress time, play with people who are better than you. That way you can absorb their experiences, sponge from their knowledge and grow from their mistakes. As Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour once said, “You have to put yourself in an environment where you get your ass kicked.”

That’s why I don’t have a mentor – I have a galaxy of mentors. And the accumulated insight from each of their life experiences compresses my time beyond belief. Just make sure you’re not bypassing real experience. Becoming a clone of people you admire gets you nowhere.

The point is: If you can’t whistle while you work, you may as well hustle while you wait. As every unforgiving minute passes by, will you be disciplined enough to practice fertile idleness?

REMEMBER: Your time isn’t just valuable – it’s compressible.

Stop trying to steal what you need to shrink.

LET ME ASK YA THIS...Are you finding time or compressing it?

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